Blue and Adam exchanged a delighted look. The only thing more pleasing than seeing Ronan singled out was seeing him singled out and forced to repeatedly sing an Irish jig.
“Piss up a rope,” Ronan said.
Gansey, unoffended, waited.
Ronan shook his head, but then, with a wicked smile, he began to sing, “Squash one, squash two, s—”
“Not that one,” both Adam and Gansey said.
“I’m not listening to that for three hours,” Adam said.
Gansey pointed at Ronan until he began to breathily whistle a jaunty reel.
And they went in deeper.
Deeper.
The sun vanished. Roots gave way to stalactites. The air smelled damp and familiar. The walls shimmered like something living. From time to time, Blue and the others had to shuffle through pools and streams — the narrow, uneven path had been carved by water, and the water was still doing that work.
Every ten times around Ronan’s reel, Blue deposited a marker. As the stack in her hand diminished, she wondered how far they would go, how they would know if they were even getting close. It seemed difficult to believe that a king might be hidden away down here. Harder still to imagine that her mother might be. This was not a place to inhabit.
She calmed her thoughts. No earthquakes. No stampedes.
She tried not to long or hope or think of or call for Maura. The last thing she wanted was for Cabeswater to produce a copy of her mother for her. She only wanted the real thing. The truth.
It became steeper. The blackness itself was fatiguing; Blue longed for the light, for space, for the sky. She felt buried alive.
Adam slipped and caught himself, hand outstretched.
“Hey!” Blue ordered. “Don’t touch the walls.”
Ronan broke off whistling to ask, “Cave germs?”
“It’s bad for stalactite growth.”
“Oh, honestly —”
“Ronan!” ordered Gansey from the front of the line, not turning, his canary sweater rendered light gray by the headlamps. “Get back to work.”
Ronan had only just begun to whistle once more when Gansey disappeared.
“What?” said Adam.
Then he was snatched from his feet. He slammed the ground and skidded away on his side, fingers trailing.
Blue didn’t have time to realize what this meant when she felt Ronan grab her from behind. Then the rope at her waist snagged tight, threatening to pull her off her feet as well. But he was well planted. His fingers were rooted into her arms so tightly they hurt.
Adam was still on the ground, but he’d stopped sliding.
“Gansey?” he called, the word doleful in the vast space beyond. “Are you okay down there?”
Because Gansey had not just vanished — he’d fallen into a hole.
Thank goodness we were tied together, Blue thought.
Ronan’s arms were still locked around her; she felt them quivering. She didn’t know if it was from muscle strain or worry. He had not even hesitated before grabbing her.
I can’t let myself forget that.
“Gansey?” Adam repeated, and there was just an edge of something terrible behind it. He had spackled confidence too heavily over his anxiety for it to be invisible.
Three tugs. Blue felt them shiver through Adam to her.
Adam laid his face down on the mud in visible relief.
“What’s going on?” Ronan asked. “Where is he?”
“He must be hanging,” Adam replied, uncertainty letting his Henrietta accent snatch the last g from hanging. “The rope’s cutting me in half it’s pulling so hard. I can’t get closer to help. It’s slimy — his weight would just pull me in.”
Freeing herself from Ronan’s arms, Blue took an experimental step closer to where Gansey had disappeared. The rope between her and Adam slackened, but he slid no closer to the hole. Slowly, she said, “I think you can be a counterweight if you don’t move, Adam. Ronan, stay up here — if anything happens and I start slipping, can you anchor yourself?”
Ronan’s headlamp pointed at a muddy column. He nodded.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m going to go over and take a look.”
She crept slowly past Adam. His fingers were hooked uselessly into the sloppy ground by his cheek.
She nearly fell into the hole.
No wonder Gansey hadn’t seen it. There was a rock ledge and then, just — nothing. She swept her headlamp back and forth and saw only inky black. The chasm was too wide to see the other side. Too deep to see the bottom.
The safety rope was visible, though, dark with mud, leading into the pit. Blue shone her flashlight into the black.
“Gansey?”
“I’m here.” Gansey’s voice was closer than she expected. Quieter than she expected, too. “I just — I believe I’m having a panic attack.”
“You’re having a panic attack? New rule: Everyone should give four tugs before suddenly disappearing. Have you broken anything?”
A long pause. “No.”
Something about the tone of the single syllable conveyed, all at once, that he had not been kidding about his fear.
Blue wasn’t sure that reassurance was her strong point, especially when she was the one who wanted it, but she tried. “It’ll be okay. We’re anchored up here. All you need to do is climb out. You’re not going to fall.”
“It’s not that.” His voice was a sliver. “There is something on my skin and it is reminding me of …”
He trailed off.
“Water,” Blue suggested. “Or mud. It’s everywhere. Say something again so I can point the flashlight at you.”
There was nothing but the sound of his breathing, jagged and afraid. She swept the flashlight beam again.
“Or mosquitoes. Mosquitoes are everywhere,” she said, voice bright.
No reply.
“There are over two dozen species of cave beetle,” she added. “I read that before we came today.”
Gansey whispered, “Hornets.”
Her heart contracted.
In the wash of adrenaline, she talked herself down: Yes, hornets could kill Gansey with just a sting, but no, there were not hornets in this cave. And today was not the day that Gansey was going to die, because she had seen his spirit on the day he died, and that spirit had been wearing an Aglionby sweater spattered with rain. Not a pair of khakis and a cheery yellow V-neck.
Her flashlight beam finally found him. He hung limply in his harness, head tilted down, hands over his ears. Her flashlight beam traced his heaving shoulders. They were spattered with mud and grime, but there were no insects on them.